3 ms·

>Have you attempted to contribute to Wikipedia and had that experience, or is this based on your guess as to what would happen? I have. I was a very active WP

>Have you attempted to contribute to Wikipedia and had that experience, or is this based on your guess as to what would happen? I have. I was a very active WP editor (mostly on religion articles) in the 2005-2007 timeframe. From what I can tell, it's only gotten worse. There are some articles that you can change without having to bicker for three weeks before your changes finally stick, but at least in the fields I'm interested in, that's definitely not true. These days when I make a change (only a handful per year now), I get accused of violating WP "canvassing policies", which didn't even exist back in my day, assuming bad faith, and whatever other stupid acronym the adversarial side can come up with. Wikipedians who don't like your edits will drag them through so much bureaucracy only the most determined editors care enough to push through it. Even then there's no guarantee the bureaucracy will make the correct decision; you almost have to get something to the Arbitration Committee to know you're dealing with someone that at least sort of understands what they're talking about.

whatusername 16y ago
You were editing religious articles. And you're complaining about bickering. What exactly did you expect? Around 07 I made the first few edits to the wiki page for the small town I grew up (added the first 2 sentances of custom text) and updated the census statistics. It's now at 1600 words -- and I don't think has ever had any acronyms thrown at it (the only discussion page text is my question about census data from 2007) For most articles -- for people who act as contributors -- the bureaucracy just isn't there.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  It wasn't only religion articles, I experience the same on almost any topic of general interest. Niche articles that are primarily regurgitation of statistics like articles about small towns (which consist primarily of weather and census data) obviously don't get much attention or controversy because there's not much interesting going on there. "Hard science" articles are harder to bicker about, but it still happens there occasionally. And everywhere outside of that this useless bureaucracy, reversion, and bickering cycle is the predominant activity on Wikipedia.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    But general purpose topics are going to be popular for people to modify. As the modifications on something increase, the more infrastructure and procedures you'll need in order to ensure that the the end-product is always good.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
I think religion qualifies as one of the few areas where you might expect controversy. My experience was completely the opposite. A while back I contributed to the article on Hilbert Space. In particular, listed Sobolev spaces as an example of a Hilbert space. I didn't handhold my contribution, bicker or anything. I submitted, forgot about it, and checked in a few months later. The bureaucracy decided that Sobolev spaces are a noteworthy example of Hilbert spaces and significantly improved on what I wrote.

whatusername 16y ago

You were editing religious articles. And you're complaining about bickering. What exactly did you expect? Around 07 I made the first few edits to the wiki page for the small town I grew up (added the first 2 sentances of custom text) and updated the census statistics. It's now at 1600 words -- and I don't think has ever had any acronyms thrown at it (the only discussion page text is my question about census data from 2007) For most articles -- for people who act as contributors -- the bureaucracy just isn't there.

cookiecaper 16y ago
It wasn't only religion articles, I experience the same on almost any topic of general interest. Niche articles that are primarily regurgitation of statistics like articles about small towns (which consist primarily of weather and census data) obviously don't get much attention or controversy because there's not much interesting going on there. "Hard science" articles are harder to bicker about, but it still happens there occasionally. And everywhere outside of that this useless bureaucracy, reversion, and bickering cycle is the predominant activity on Wikipedia.
- scott_s 16y ago
  But general purpose topics are going to be popular for people to modify. As the modifications on something increase, the more infrastructure and procedures you'll need in order to ensure that the the end-product is always good.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

I think religion qualifies as one of the few areas where you might expect controversy. My experience was completely the opposite. A while back I contributed to the article on Hilbert Space. In particular, listed Sobolev spaces as an example of a Hilbert space. I didn't handhold my contribution, bicker or anything. I submitted, forgot about it, and checked in a few months later. The bureaucracy decided that Sobolev spaces are a noteworthy example of Hilbert spaces and significantly improved on what I wrote.